Apple announced the sales milestone in a news release Wednesday. The company says Phillip Lupke of Germany purchased and downloaded Buch's song and will receive an iTunes gift card worth 10,000 euros, or about $13, 500.

It took the Cupertino, Calif., company 12 years to reach the milestone. Customers download an average of 15,000 songs a minute on iTunes, which was launched in January 2001. The digital retailer's catalog is 26 million songs deep.